English service 4 hours 56 minutes. It is hoped to establish V.H.F. programme links from the studios at Mercury House to Mount Gough during the coming year and interruptions to the service from lines failure should thereafter be eliminated.
Studios and Equipment
114. Recording Channel II was refurbished during the year, and the introduction of new equipment allowed greater facilities to be offered to programme producers. The Channel is now capable of continuous tape recording and play-back at 32, 74 and 15 inches per second and there are facilities for disc cutting and all types of dubbing.
115. The high consumption of magnetic tapes and the considerable number of programmes which necessitate tapes to be cut and edited has resulted in a large portion of the stock which contains splices. The difficulties encountered in determining whether a tape is satisfactory after it has been edited is that individual splices may or may not be satisfactory, and also that tape of different standards may have been introduced into a reel and thus upset the overall balance. A cursory physical inspection will not reveal how many splices a tape contains nor their standard, and the task of winding through the hundreds of reels in use would be too enormous to consider. In order to maintain the tape stock in as satisfactory condition as possible a tape recovery unit was developed in the workshop. This examines individual tapes at high speed and counts the splices as they are being run through. The information obtained in this way enables a greater number of tapes to be salvaged, and imperfect splices can be permanently joined by means of an R.F. heating process.
116. Another interesting development in the workshop of Radio Hong Kong has been the manufacture of an Electronic Effects Unit based on a 'white noise' generator. By varying the different controls various sound effects such as single shot or machine gunfire, ricocheting of bullets, the sounds of surf, jet planes, etc. can be reproduced. This Electronic Effects Unit is mainly for use by drama producers.
117. A prototype automatic quick start device for use with record turn tables was made up and put into test service. This unit allows the programme technician to start discs automatically and assists in the selection of the correct starting groove when a particular part of a disc is to be played. The prototype proved very successful on test, and plans are now going ahead to convert all turntables to incorporate this device.
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